


Friend of a Friend

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Pre-Trilogy, budding romance between dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 10:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13234044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: An Alliance cadet and an engineering student fall in love.(pre-ME)





	Friend of a Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ferociousqueak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferociousqueak/gifts).



> Written for my lovely friend ferociousqueak, who gave me three prompts for my spacer Shepard's two moms. I tried to work all three into the same fic. The prompts were "friend of a friend," "cooking," and "I never would have guessed that."

Rae has only lived with her roommate for a couple of months, but she can already tell that they could not be more different. Yeah, they’re both engineering majors, but: Rae likes to focus and work in silence. She’s no good for conversation before a morning cup of strong black coffee. She’s perfectly happy with no conversation at all.

Jami, her roommate, turns music on to work, has already made friends with everyone in their cohort, rises early in the morning, and likes to talk. A lot.

Rae will admit that they’re both learning. Jami has learned to wait until after coffee to say “good morning,” and uses her earbuds at least 50% of the time these days. Rae has learned to have at least one civilized conversation per day. It’s a work in progress.

But this weekend, Jami has like four friends from home visiting, and they are a flock of chatter and excitement. Voices rising, lots of hugging, lots of movement in Rae’s peripheral vision as people talk and gesture. Rae hasn’t even managed to tell them all apart. They’re all taller than she is (obviously, most people are taller than she is). Two of them have reddish hair and one has blond and two have dark hair, and that’s about what Rae can keep track of. She jams in her own earbuds to drown them out and slouches into her seat, trying to focus on her book. She’d go to the library to study, but it’s Saturday night and the library closes early. Plus, she already had all her midterms last week, so she’s kind of at loose ends. Normally she’d just stay in and read or something —

“Hey. Hi!”

One of Jami’s friends is waving a hand in front of Rae’s face, and smiling. It’s one of the red-haired ones. The one with light skin, not the one with dark skin. She might be the tallest of them, her hair cut short, freckled face, curvy. She’s… really pretty hot, actually.

She is still smiling at Rae and waving, so Rae pulls the earbuds out of her ears and winces at the sudden din. “Yeah?”

“Hi, it’s Rae, right?”

“Right.” Rae got introduced to all of them when they got there, and she’s already forgotten everybody’s names. She tries to remember some scrap of the introductions. This one is wearing a blue tee shirt that says “Systems Alliance” on it, so she must be the one who’s a cadet at the service academy. As far as Rae is concerned, this is a baffling life choice, but what the hell, other people make baffling choices all the time. 

The tee shirt fits her really snugly. Rae tries not to stare at Hot Cadet’s chest, and finds herself locked onto a friendly blue gaze instead.

“We were going to head out for some drinks,” Hot Cadet says.

“Oh. Okay.” At least the room will be quiet then.

“And we were wondering, do you want to come with us?”

Rae squints at her to see if this is a joke. But no, Hot Cadet looks really earnest about it. The others have gathered near the door, and a couple of them are looking at her expectantly. Jami calls out, “Rae, are you coming? You really should get out of this room sometime!”

Rae opens her mouth and hesitates. The word “no” is all ready to roll off her tongue. “No thanks,” she could say, like she usually did in high school, until people stopped asking.

Hot Cadet is still smiling at her, though, and actually looks eager for Rae to join them.

“Okay,” she finds herself saying. “Sure.”

Hot Cadet’s smile becomes absolutely dazzling. “Great!”

She walks beside Rae as they troop over to one of the bars just off-campus. “I know we’re a lot to take at once,” she says apologetically. “We’ve all known each other since we were kids, and we’re all at different schools now, so we’ve been looking forward to getting together.

“It’s okay,” Rae says, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat.

“But Jami talks about you a lot, so I was really hoping to meet you.”

“You were?” Rae can’t imagine that she’s all that interesting. She darts a glance at her companion.

Who still looks extremely earnest. “Yeah. She says you’re the smartest person in your cohort.”

“Maybe,” Rae says doubtfully. “It’s a little early to say.”

“Anyway, Jami talks about you a lot, and I’m glad we can hang out for a bit.”

Rae files away the proposition that Jami talks about her to her friends so she can think about that later. “Listen… I know Jami introduced you before, but I’m kind of bad with names.”

Hot Cadet smiles. “Hannah. Hannah Shepard.”

“Hannah,” she echoes. It’s pretty. Soft. Rae’s not sure it fits with the military thing. “Hi.”

Apparently Hannah really does want to talk to Rae. Hannah asks questions, and before Rae knows it, she’s complaining about the religion course she’s taking as a humanities requirement, and then they’re all talking about cool classes and boring classes and bullshit requirements, and she’s part of the conversation without even trying, which is… nice. Unusual, but nice.

As the evening winds down, Rae even finds the courage to ask Hannah the thing she’s been wondering ever since Jami introduced her. “Why would you join the military, anyway?”

Hannah smiles and shrugs, looking down into her class. “I want to serve.”

“Serve what, though? The Systems Alliance is only sort of a government. Not all nations have even signed the treaty or whatever they’re calling it yet.”

“The Alliance is so new, it needs leadership. Good people working for it, to take it in the right direction.” Hannah looks up, her eyes blue and luminous in the weird bar lighting. “If we’re going to explore the stars, I want to be there.”

“Huh.” Rae gets that, at least. She’s eaten up all the news of space exploration ever since she was a kid. She still has a poster of Sally Ride on her wall back home. “Okay, yeah. I know what you mean.”

“Besides, it’s a family tradition. Not the Alliance of course, but my grandfather was in the UNAS Navy. We Shepards go way back with the service.”

Rae frowns, trying to imagine it. “So… all the shooting and stuff doesn’t bother you?”

Hannah shrugs again. “It’s training. Discipline. I don’t want to shoot anyone, but if that’s what it takes to protect innocent people, I’ll do it.”

“I guess,” Rae says doubtfully.

“Besides, it’s not very likely we’re going to have to fight any actual aliens.” She rattles the ice in her empty glass and rises out of her seat. “I’m going to get another drink, do you want anything?”

Rae bites her lip. Up til now, she’s managed to conceal the fact that she’s not actually consuming alcohol. “Just juice and soda,” she says finally.

Hannah’s face scrunches up a bit. “You sure?”

“I don’t drink,” Rae says tersely.

“Oh. Okay.” Hannah goes, and Rae shifts uncomfortably in her seat. Hannah probably thinks she’s weird and uptight. The rest of them are falling onto the table laughing over some joke she didn’t hear, and abruptly she feels like she’s not part of the group at all.

She has half a mind to sidle out of the door, but Hannah’s coming back across the bar with glasses in both hands, so Rae stays.

#

The day before the spring semester starts, Rae gets back first and rattles around the dorm room, idly. Outside, the cold is too biting for her Arizona-raised self, especially since she just spent the winter break there. Rae opens up her textbooks for the semester half-heartedly, but for once she can’t get herself to focus, and the room seems way too quiet.

She’s starting the first chapter over again when the door flies open. “Rae! You’re here!” Jami cries, swooping in and nearly nabbing Rae in a hug. She stops barely in time, holding out her hand for a high-five instead.

“I told you I would be,” Rae replies, putting the book aside with more than a little gratitude and slapping Jami’s palm.

“Which is why we grabbed pizza on the way,” Jami says with a grin.

“We?”

“I’ve got another day to get back to the Academy, so Jami and I carpooled,” says Hannah, in the doorway, a pizza box in one hand and a bag in the other.

Her hair’s grown out a little from the short cut she had in the fall, her cheeks pink with cold, bundled up in a blue coat and white scarf that do wonders for her eyes.

“So yeah. Pizza and beer. Do we still have napkins around here somewhere?” Jami dashes across the room and starts rummaging around in her desk.  

“And root beer,” Hannah adds, a little shyly. “If that’s okay?”

Rae blinks, startled. She hadn’t expected Hannah to remember. To tell the truth, root beer’s not her favorite, but… she remembered, so: “Sure. That’s great.”

Hannah turns a little pinker.

It is only the three of them, sitting on the floor in the dorm room, with Jami telling stories about her family’s holiday parties and all of them comparing notes on the vids they watched over the break. Hannah sleeps on the floor of their room that night, and Rae falls asleep listening to the extra sound of her breathing.

#

Hannah comes to visit on the first weekend in April.

“We’re gonna have picnics,” Jami proclaims beforehand, “and go hiking. We never go hiking.”

“We never have time to go hiking, because we have mountains of homework,” Rae points out.

Jami waves that off. “We’re going to make time.”

Except that the weather turns chill and dreary, a steady cold rain that keeps everyone indoors. And Jami ends up in the library working on a group presentation for Monday, leaving Hannah and Rae alone in the dorm room.

“I know,” Hannah says, after only a few minutes of awkward silence. “Let’s make cookies.”

“I don’t know how to cook,” Rae warns her.

Hannah shrugs. “Cookies are easy. I’ll show you.”

Rae goes along, half curious, half reluctant to leave the warmth of Hannah’s presence. They end up in the tiny kitchen on their floor, mixing up butter and sugar and flour and eggs. Hannah’s the one doing most of the work, rolling up her sleeves to show muscular, freckled forearms. Rae watches her work the cookie dough with her bare, freshly scrubbed hands, more fascinated than she’s like to admit.

“Isn’t that messy?”

“It’s the best way to get everything mixed in really well,” Hannah replies, and then stops, glancing up at Rae anxiously. “I mean, you don’t mind, do you? I promise I washed my hands.”

“I don’t mind,” Rae says, perching on the wobbly little table and trying not to think about licking cookie dough off of Hannah’s fingers.

Hannah looks relieved. “That’s good. Sorry, I always do it this way, I just didn’t think.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I just thought people usually used a spoon or a mixer or something.”

Hannah tears open the bag of chocolate chips and mixes those in, too, squishing the dough through long, capable fingers.

“You’ve been visiting a lot,” Rae says, to distract herself.

Hannah pauses with her head bent. “I guess I have?”

Jami’s friends have all made weekend visits more than once over the past year. As far as Rae can tell, it’s just the way their friend-group works. They look unusually social to Rae, but then Rae’s unusually solitary. Her only good friend from high school is a guy who’s now at a university across the country, and the two of them are perfectly happy with late-night chat. Jami and her friends like to be in each other’s space.

Hannah’s visited more often than the rest of them, though. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but Rae hasn’t been able to figure out why. She swings her feet and watches as Hannah starts dropping balls of dough onto the cookie sheet. “Aren’t you, like, using up all your weekend leave? You probably don’t get that much, right?”

Hannah’s cheeks turn pink. “It’s okay,” she says. “I can’t take weekend trips home, it’s too far away, but I can go somewhere closer, so…”

“And you and Jami are good friends, so…” Rae trails off, hoping Hannah will finish the sentence. This explanation makes sense, at least. If Hannah can’t go home, she might as well use the leave somehow. But there have to be more interesting places than here, right?

Outside in the hallway, two people start talking.

“We are, and you and I are friends, too, right?” Hannah looks at her like she’s asking for something.

“Sure, right,” Rae says, a little relieved to hear Hannah put the word to it. Not just friend-of-a-friend, but actually friends. That’s good. “So that’s it?”

“Yes.” Hannah bends her head and holds still for a moment. “Actually…”

Rae waits for a couple of seconds. When Hannah doesn’t say anything, she prompts her: “Yeah?”

Hannah takes a breath. “Let me get these in the oven first.” She puts the last couple balls of dough on the sheet, sticks it in the oven, and sets the timer. But instead of saying anything, next she turns to the sick and washes off her hands, to Rae’s disappointment. She dries her hands meticulously on a checked towel, keeping her eyes down, and then turns around, leaning back against the edge of the counter. Her chin is up, resolute. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Rae frowns, trying to figure out what the big deal is here. “Okay?”

“I mean, I don’t know if you’re… even interested in, in—”

“ _Oh my god you fucking asshole!_ ” someone shrieks outside the door.

Hannah freezes, her eyes going wide. Rae starts, nearly falling off the table.

“ _Come on, baby, it’s not like that_ ,” comes a male voice, pleading, gratingly nasal.

“What the hell,” Hannah whispers.

“ _So what is it like exactly, did you just fall over and hit her with your dick, or what?_ ”

Hannah puts one hand over her mouth, her face going red. Rae groans and slides off the table. “It’s just Drezz and Tina.” Drezz is a dumbass dude who hooked up with Tina back in week one. The two of them have been all over each other ever since, making out in the corner of the floor lounge and always walking around with their hands in each other’s back pockets, like somebody might accidentally forget they were a couple if they didn’t constantly remind everyone.

Jami’s been betting for a couple of weeks that those two were about to implode. Looks like she just hit the jackpot.

“ _No, sweetie, honest, I never —_ ”

“I’ll tell them to knock it off.” Rae heads toward the door. She’s yelled at these two before, when they were noisily macking on each other in front of the restroom, and she told them to get the hell out of the way so people could use it. They’ve avoided her ever since; Jami claims they’re afraid of her. The idea gives Rae a peculiar sort of satisfaction. She’s not sure anyone else has been afraid of her, ever.

“Rae!” Hannah makes a grab for Rae’s arm and misses. “You can’t just go out there!”

Rae’s already barreling toward the door, focused on her objective, and shoves it open. “Hey!”

Drezz and Tina both turn to stare at her like they’ve never seen her before. Drezz is disheveled, hair sticking out every which way; Tina looks furious. “Take it somewhere else,” Rae suggests. “Maybe with some fucking soundproofing. Nobody needs to hear your ugly break-up. Or about your dick, Drezz.”

Drezz turns bright red. Tina tosses her head. “She’s right,” she informs him. “Like me. I don’t want to hear about your dick ever again.”

She turns on her heel storms off. Drezz gapes, looking like somebody stole his teddy bear, and then goes chasing after her, shouting, “Baby… baby, wait!”

Rae watches them go. A couple doors down, somebody’s laughing their head off. Further down the hall, there’s a smattering of applause as Tina makes her exit. Satisfied, Rae turns around and marches back into the kitchen. Hannah’s staring at her with pink cheeks and her hand over her mouth. Rae’s stomach twists the sudden certainty that she’s horribly offended Hannah somehow.

“What?” Rae asks.

“I just…” Hannah uncovers her mouth, and she’s laughing. “You’re just not afraid of anyone or anything. It’s amazing.”

“You mean clueless,” Rae mutters, embarrassment washing over her. She folds her arms across her chest.

“No! That’s not what I mean at all! It’s one of the things I love about you.”

Rae’s mouth falls open as she stares stupidly at Hannah, shocked out of her defensiveness. She has to take a second to work things through before she can speak. “What.”

Hannah’s face flames a dull brick-red. She rubs the back of her neck and takes a deep breath. “That’s, um. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I haven’t been coming back here to see Jami. Or, not just to see Jami. I’ve been coming to see you.”

Rae turns that one around in her mind, a puzzle piece that just might fit. Hannah visits a lot. Hannah always makes a point of talking with Rae. Hannah asks after her when she’s chatting with Jami. Hannah remembers what she likes to drink, and what kind of pizza. Rae has noted each of those facts, but she’s never added them up to anything more than Hannah being a nice person. An unusually nice person.

“I. I never would’ve guessed that.” Never in a million lifetimes would she have guessed that Hannah, tall, splendid Hannah, with her military career and her pile of friends, would have the slightest interest in Rae.

“I mean…” Hannah’s hands flutter helplessly, and she rubs her neck again, her gaze drifting toward the floor. “Jami told me I had to say something, and I knew she was right—”

Ah. That would explain why Jami had to spend so much time at the library today.

“— and I would totally understand if you don’t feel like that about, about me. I don’t even know if you like girls. Or, um, or anyone, and it’s totally fine if you don’t, I just, I just had to tell you.”

Rae is not sure she really knows about Love. But she does know that Hannah Shepard has somehow taken up a permanent space inside her brain; Rae never goes an entire day without thinking about her, somehow. And when they’re in the same room, like now, there’s this longing to be closer, to have her full attention, even to touch her. Rae had told herself it was just… lust, just a little crush. Nothing that mattered.

But maybe it’s not that. Maybe that kind of longing is another name for love. Rae builds stuff, she doesn’t do philosophy shit. She stands there, her mouth half-open and her brain searching for words.

Hannah softly stammers to a halt and — _oh, fuck_ — wipes at her eyes.

Rae absolutely can’t stand by and let that happen, even if she hasn’t figured out what to say.

She takes three steps, closing that distance, close enough she can feel the warmth radiating from Hannah’s skin, and rises onto her toes, and kisses her.

Rae doesn’t know a lot about kissing. Hannah is so much taller that her kiss lands off-center.

But Hannah’s lips are soft and very warm. She gasps, a tiny intake of air, before she kisses back, and that’s better, yes, and maybe it doesn’t matter if you don’t know much about kissing if the other person’s that willing to kiss you back.

They break apart, staring at each other with wide eyes. Hannah says, “So you…”

“I’m not good at this stuff,” Rae says, feeling desperately awkward and flushed all at once.

Hannah blinks. A slow, brilliant smile spreads across her face. “You’re doing fine.”

“I like you,” Rae says, because “love” feels like too complicated a word. “I —”

This time, Hannah kisses her, a little messy and enthusiastic, bending down to do it. Her hands rise tentatively to Rae’s shoulders, not quite pulling her in.

Emboldened, Rae leans into her and tries putting an arm around Hannah. She’s so warm, solid under her tee shirt and hoodie, fitting perfectly into the curve of Rae’s arm. Hannah’s grip tightens, drawing Rae closer, surrounding Rae with her warmth.

A timer starts beeping shrilly.

Hannah stiffens. “Oh fuck, the cookies.”

Rae burst out giggling. She tries to stifle it, but it’s no use. Her cheek drops to Hannah’s shoulder.

Hannah’s shaking, too. “I have to —”

Rae lets her go, and stands back while Hannah grabs a potholder and bends over to take the cookie sheet out of the oven. She watches the curve of Hannah’s back and hips — she can watch, now, without feeling guilty about it. Her heart is pounding faster, and she feels loose, expansive, like she absorbed the bubble of Hannah’s warmth and now it’s expanding around her.

Hannah glances over her shoulder as she slides the cookies off the sheet onto a plate, smiling, and turns pink when Rae smiles back.

Rae steals a cookie while Hannah’s putting the next batch on the sheet. Hannah grabs one herself, and yelps as the chocolate chips scald her mouth.

The burst of melted chocolate burns Rae’s mouth, too, but she doesn’t care. She steps up and reaches for Hannah as soon as the oven door closes.

This time, when Rae kisses her, Hannah tastes like melted chocolate and sugar and vanilla.


End file.
